Interesting story from a sociopath (behind a paywall so cut and paste)
Whenever I ask my mother if she remembers the time in second grade when I stabbed a kid in the head with a pencil, her answer is the same: âVaguely.â
And I believe her. So much about my early childhood is vague. Some things I remember with absolute clarity. Like the smell of the trees at Redwood National Park and our house on the hill near downtown San Francisco. God, I loved that house. Other things arenât so clear, like the first time I sneaked into my neighborâs house when they werenât home.
I started stealing before I could talk. At least, I think I did. By the time I was six or seven I had an entire box full of things Iâd stolen in my closet. Somewhere in the archives of People magazine there is a photo of Ringo Starr holding me as a toddler. Weâre standing in his backyardânot far from Los Angeles, where my father was an executive in the music businessâand I am literally stealing the glasses off his face. I was not the first child to ever play with a grown-upâs glasses. But based on the spectacles currently perched on my bookshelf, Iâm pretty sure I was the only one to swipe a pair from a Beatle.
To be clear: I wasnât a kleptomaniac. A kleptomaniac is a person with a persistent and irresistible urge to take things that donât belong to them. I suffered from a different type of urge, a compulsion brought about by the discomfort of apathy, the nearly indescribable absence of common social emotions like shame and empathy.
I didnât understand any of this back then. All I knew was that I didnât feel things the way other kids did. I didnât feel guilt when I lied. I didnât feel compassion when classmates got hurt on the playground. For the most part, I felt nothing, and I didnât like the way that ânothingâ felt. So I did things to replace the nothingness withâ¦something.
This impulse felt like an unrelenting pressure that expanded to permeate my entire self. The longer I tried to ignore it, the worse it got. My muscles would tense, my stomach would knot. Tighter. Tighter. It was claustrophobic, like being trapped inside my brain. Trapped inside a void.
Stealing wasnât something I necessarily wanted to do. It just happened to be the easiest way to stop the tension. The first time I made this connection was in first grade, sitting behind a girl named Clancy. The pressure had been building for days. Without knowing exactly why, I was overcome with frustration and had the urge to do something violent.
I wanted to stand up and flip over my desk. I imagined running to the heavy steel door that opened to the playground and slamming my fingers in its hinges. For a minute I thought I might actually do it. But then I saw Clancyâs barrette. She had two in her hair, pink bows on either side. The one on the left had slipped down. Take it, my thoughts commanded, and youâll feel better.
I liked Clancy and I didnât want to steal from her. But I wanted my brain to stop pulsing, and some part of me knew it would help. So, carefully, I reached forward and unclipped the bow. Once it was in my hand, I felt better, as if some air had been released from an overinflated balloon. I didnât know why, but I didnât care. Iâd found a solution. It was a relief.
These early acts of deviance are encoded in my mind like GPS coordinates plotting a course toward awareness. Even now, I can recall where I got most of the things that didnât belong to me as a child. But I canât explain the locket with the âLâ inscribed on it.
âPatric, you absolutely must tell me where you got this,â my mother said the day she found it in my room. We were standing next to my bed. One of the pillow shams was crooked against the headboard and I was consumed with the urge to straighten it. âLook at me,â she said, grabbing my shoulders. âSomewhere out there a person is missing this locket. They are missing it right now and theyâre so sad they canât find it. Think about how sad that person must be.â
I shut my eyes and tried to imagine what the locket owner was feeling, but I couldnât. I felt nothing. When I opened my eyes and looked into hers, I knew my mother could tell.
âSweetheart, listen to me,â she said, kneeling. âTaking something that doesnât belong to you is stealing. And stealing is very, very bad.â
Again, nothing.
Mom paused, not sure what to do next. She took a deep breath and asked, âHave you done this before?â
I nodded and pointed to the closet. Together we went through the box. I explained what everything was and where it had come from. Once the box was empty, she stood and said we were going to return every item to its rightful owner, which was fine with me. I didnât fear consequences and I didnât suffer remorse, two more things Iâd already figured out werenât ânormal.â Returning the stuff actually served my purpose. The box was full, and emptying it would give me a fresh space to store things I had yet to steal.
âWhy did you take these things?â Mom asked me.
I thought of the pressure in my head and the sense that I needed to do bad things sometimes. âI donât know,â I said.
âWell⦠Are you sorry?â she asked.
âYes,â I said. I was sorry. But I was sorry I had to steal to stop fantasizing about violence, not because I had hurt anyone.
Empathy, like remorse, never came naturally to me. I was raised in the Baptist church. I knew we were supposed to feel bad about committing sins. My teachers talked about âhonor systemsâ and something called âshame,â which I understood intellectually, but it wasnât something I felt. My inability to grasp core emotional skills made the process of making and keeping friends somewhat of a challenge. It wasnât that I was mean or anything. I was simply different.
Now that Iâm an adult, I can tell you why I behaved this way. I can point to research examining the relationship between anxiety and apathy, and how stress associated with inner conflict is believed to subconsciously compel people to behave destructively. I believe that my urge to act out was most likely my brainâs way of trying to jolt itself into some semblance of ânormal.â But none of this information was easy to find. I had to hunt for it. I am still hunting.
For more than a century, society has deemed sociopathy untreatable and unredeemable. The afflicted have been maligned and shunned by mental health professionals who either donât understand or choose to ignore the fact that sociopathyâlike many personality disordersâexists on a spectrum.
After years of study, intensive therapy and earning a Ph.D. in psychology, I can say that sociopaths arenât âbadâ or âevilâ or âcrazy.â We simply have a harder time with feelings. We act out to fill a void. When I understood this about myself, I was able to control it.
It is a tragic misconception that all sociopaths are doomed to hopeless, loveless lives. The truth is that I share a personality type with millions of others, many of whom have good jobs, close-knit families and real friends. We represent a truth thatâs hard to believe: Thereâs nothing inherently immoral about having limited access to emotion. I offer my story because I know Iâm not alone.
Patric Gagne is a writer, former therapist and advocate for people suffering from sociopathic, psychopathic and antisocial personality disorders. This essay is adapted from her book, âSociopath: A Memoir,â which will be published April 2 by Simon & Schuster.
I feel you.
